BARTONVILLE - These people are nuts. One hundred percent out of their minds.

There is no other explanation. Then again, Jake Johnson said, 'It's the funnest thing about coming here.'

Johnson is one of the nutburgers. He was talking about The Jump at the Peoria Motorcycle Club, where the best racing riders hit the top of a 150-yard hill going 70 mph and see nothing but sky for an eternal second as they take flight for nearly 50 yards — half a freaking football field — before their tires find Earth again and the dirt-track race resumes.

I don't know about you, but I will stick to roller coasters for my rush fix. Or try hang gliding, bungee jumping, sky-diving. Perhaps even some of the racers feel that way. Not all of them go full-throttle gonzo up that backstretch. Most of them settle for shorter flights. Their main thought after whizzing off the top of the hill is to get back down as quickly as possible.

But that's no way to win the AMA Grand National TT race. You don't have to jump your bike the farthest to win here, but you have to jump big. There's no backing off. No room for fear.

"Overall, a lot of guys lose a little bit on The Jump," Henry Wiles said.

Not Wiles. Elsewhere on the AMA circuit, he is known as "Hammering Hank." Here, he is King Henry, the man who on Sunday won the Peoria TT race for a 10th consecutive time, twice more than the record 8 established by the Prince of Peoria, Chris Carr, in the 1980s and '90s.

His rivals are not sure how Wiles does it.

"I wish I knew," Johnson said. "He's got this place dialed in."

Johnson finished third. Jared Mees took second. Both of them repeatedly jumped further than Wiles, so winning in Peoria is not all about The Jump. It requires negotiating the quick right and left that follow the landing, as well as skill in the turns. But The Jump quickly weeds out the pretenders and pares the field to a handful of contenders.

Wiles rode his first expert class race here in 2003. He was admittedly "off the radar." But the way Wiles attacked The Jump caught the attention of Carr, who understood there was a successor in the wings. And Wiles remembers another rider's mechanic telling his guy: "Follow Wiles over the jump if you want to win this race."

Mees and Johnson have motocross backgrounds, and Wiles said he "started jumping 100-foot doubles when I was 12." All three are undoubtedly blessed with a daredevil gene, but they're not reckless.

"It's pretty sketchy," Johnson said of The Jump. "It's nothing, compared to a supercross triple, because you're not jumping that high. But it's fast and there's not a whole lot of room. You get off track coming down and you'll be in the creek. There's no room for error. And come race time, you've got to tame it down a little bit. You can't do that all-out 25 laps in a row without crashing or breaking something — or breaking yourself."

Page 2 of 2 - "It's not the fastest way, to whack it wide open up and over," Mees agreed. "That makes you land too far out and creates other problems."

"It's kind of risky to go real hard over it," Wiles said. "I find if I do that, my front end shakes a little bit. And you can get a flat tire because your tire flattens out when you land. The biggest thing is not getting too squirrelly over it. People who have problems with it, they don't have problems with the actual jump, it's the landing. They don't know where to go, what to do."

That's why they back off.

The contenders don't.

For Wiles, dominating Peoria is an indescribable feeling. For guys like Mees and Johnson, their admiration for what Wiles accomplishes here is surpassed only by their frustration. But they enjoy the unique features of the PMC track in Thunder Valley.

KIRK WESSLER is Journal Star executive sports editor/columnist. He can be reached at kwessler@pjstar.com, or 686-3216. Read his Captain's Blog at blogs.pjstar.com/wessler/. Follow him on Twitter @KirkWessler.